To parents of small children (babies):

Please do not bring your babies into my store. Our policy is that babies in arms or carriers (no strollers) are allowed on the second floor only. That is the only floor where the products are pretty much PG-13. Most of the employees are pretty touchy about the subject, and the manager is a flake when it comes to stuff like this. Please make our jobs easier and just get a babysitter for the kid while you go shopping. Please don't try to bring your toddler (or older) child into our store period.

Valentine's Day is one of our busiest times of the year. Please keep that in mind if you end up having to have your baby with you while you shop. The lines are long, we only have a few registers, and every employee is busy with something. We do not have time to personally hold your hand (or your baby) while you shop for something (especially if you're not totally sure what you're looking for). If your baby starts fussing, and you're not done shopping, either get what you have now (if there's no line) and come back later, or just put your items down and leave the store. We don't mind at all, and most of our other customers will thank you. I know it's a pain to have to stop shopping because of the baby, and you might not have a chance to shop later, but our other customers might have a problem with a crying baby while they're shopping for toys, porn, or lingerie. Usually customers have a problem with crying babies no matter where they're shopping, but my store especially (given the nature of the products we sell).

As a side note (to store managers):

Please be consistent in your policy making. If you decide that babies are to stay on the second floor (with their parents), don't allow a baby onto one of the other floors. Don't put us in a bad situation with an irate parent if you're the one who made up the policy we're quoting.

Back to the parents:

Please don't yell at us (or worse, play the race card) for quoting a policy our manager made when it inconveniences you. We are not telling you children are not allowed because you (or the child) are black. We are telling you your child isn't allowed because they're not 18 years old. We don't care if they're 18 months old, they have to be 18 YEARS old. We're also not telling you about the policy because we want you to come back and spend even more money, we're telling you for the comfort of our OTHER customers. You know, those people walking around with products in their hands or standing at the counter handing money to the employee in exchange for the products they selected. Most of them don't feel comfortable shopping for intimate items while a baby is just a few feet from them, and no one feels comfortable shopping for intimate items while a baby is crying and carrying on!

We would love it if you came back without the baby/child, and we would be more than happy to help you select the items you need to make your Valentine's Day more romantic.

Sincerely,

M (a tired retail employee)

Time Flies

When you're stressed out.

Himself has been stressed out because I wasn't getting any hours at my theatre. He ended up paying for everything, and we ended up not always having enough money for basic needs.

To solve this problem, I got a second job.

At first this second job was really nice. Great co-workers, fun work environment, and lots to learn. The only problem is the manager. She's nice enough, until you ask for time off. Then she turns into some kind of manager monster. I asked for my birthday off, but since I had the gall to be born a week before Valentine's Day, there was no guarantee I would get the day off.

Now the job is more of a pain.

It's retail again, but the nature of the job is kind of sensitive. I work in a sex shop. Not a place where people go to have sex or anything like that, but a place where people can buy things to make their romances even better. We sell toys. We have a no return policy on all toys (for pretty obvious reasons), but that doesn't keep people from trying. The other night we had a guy bring in a toy he and his wife bought about two seconds before. The package was torn open and he told us the toy didn't work. He was looking for a refund because his wife didn't want the toy after all. The problem with that is we don't do cash refunds at all. He changed his mind later on, but he tried really hard to get the refund.

The politics are minimal which is nice. I'm too low on the totem pole to be concerned about, and I have no desire to climb that totem pole at all.

The theatre has been quiet. Most of our clients are using student techs because they're trying to cut back on expenses. There have been a few issues with scheduling, and several of the adult techs are getting all the work while a few aren't getting any hours at all. Not fun.

Himself is enjoying his job, and his boss seems really cool. He told Himself to get onto FarmVille on facebook because he needs more friends. The Boss and his wife want to have Himself and I over for dinner sometime, and his wife already considers Himself to be a member of their family. That's the type of boss-employee relationship I really like.

The girls have been their usual furry, girly selves. Lil' Princess has decided that the floor is evil unless she's hungry or thirsty. She will make every effort to not touch the floor. If we set her on the floor, she'll jump up onto the first thing she can reach and look at us like 'but why did you do that? Why?' It's been the source of many giggles around here.


That's all (for now), folks!

M

Funny!

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'

I had heard of raccoons and skunks getting drunk on fermented fruit and slug repellent made from beer, but I can honestly say I had never heard of a stoned wallaby. Now I really have to go to Australia!

M

It's been awhile!

Nothing really new happens here, so I don't write very often. The furry girls are constantly in a state between being incredibly lazy and extremely active.

Himself finally got a new job and even had his hours increased (this means if all goes well, we can pay our own rent this month! Woot!), and I've been promised a job in the fall (I work for a school district, so having a job in the fall isn't a sure thing anymore) as long as I'm willing to do sound and probably teach it to one of our newest techs, which I'm totally willing to do.

My photography has unfortunately taking a backseat in my life. Not having any money to get a better camera, or really having the time to sit down and take the pictures really put a damper on taking lots of cool pictures. I'm still planning the Tarot deck pictures, but since I want them to be perfect, I'm taking my time planning them.

This year we celebrated Father's Day with Himself's family. His dad found a 'local' steam train (by local I mean in the same state I live in, but just barely) that served a dinner on Father's Day so we did that for the day. We drove from the Seattle area to the Chehalis-Centraila area (really pretty down there, I love it) which is about an hour away or so. We rode inside the train during dinner, and then on the way back we sat outside on the benches behind the engine. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures sometime, but I forgot my camera at home and I have no idea when my father in law will have his pictures on a cd for me.

After the ride, we took more pictures (my father in law filled up his memory card on this trip!) and realized that the engineer was letting people up into the engine to take pictures and see the inside of the engine. My brother in law and Himself both wanted to do that, so we waited in 'line'. The 'line' was really a small group of people standing around and taking turns climbing up into the engine and learning something about it. We all had a pretty clear idea what the order of people was, and we were all being polite about waiting for little boys to be done looking at the really cool steam engine.

All this order was shattered when a woman walks right up to the engine as soon as aforementioned little boys climbed down and asks if she could climb up. The Engineer has no idea who has been waiting and in what order, so he tells her 'sure!'. As she's climbing up, my father in law asks if she didn't see all the other people waiting patiently for their turn (including two of the best behaved little girls in the world!). There of course was no reply from the rude woman cutting in front of everyone, and she got into position to have her picture taken only to find out that the camera her husband was using had dead batteries. He fumbled with fresh batteries for a moment and finally took the picture. The woman stayed in the engine for awhile longer (she was in there for about half an hour total) until my father in law finally spoke up.

'Hey lady!' He had to call it out a couple of times before she turned towards him. 'Why don't you get off your ass and let the people you cut in front of have a chance!' She came out of the engine apologising for cutting in line saying 'I didn't know!' She went to her husband and they started to walk away. It seemed like the end until the husband did the unthinkable. He came back and started yelling at my brother in law.

A little explaination is needed here. My in laws are not small people. Himself is actually the smallest of them all, and he looks like he could still play football and wrestle (he used to do both in high school). My brother in law is a little taller but he's still a big guy, and my father in law has hands that resemble bear paws (short chubby fingers) and a lot more muscle than it looks like.

It looked like the husband was going to clock my brother in law one, but the wife kept calling out that it was 'the other guy'. He went over to my father in law and started over, saying that they were really sorry for cutting in line but that they didn't know why people were standing around. My father in law was pretty calm, but kind of lost it when the guy said that he 'should be ashamed' because he swore in front of his precious wife. Dad said 'not at all' and left it at that until the guy started up again. Dad approached the couple calmly and more words were spoken. By the time he rejoined the group, Himself and his brother had their turn in the engine and the two little girls were climbing up (they were the luckiest ones because they got to actually ride in the engine with the engineers while they put the train away).

The couple went to their car and waited. As fate would have it, they were parked right next to our car, so we waited until they moved (we had five large people and one grandmother to fit in the car). When it was obvious that they weren't going to move any time soon, we moved our car and piled in. I think we were all expecting the other couple to follow us, but they didn't.

It was still a fun trip, and the food was pretty good. Himself and I are planning on going on one of the murder mystery dinner train trips sometime in October for our anniversary.

Speaking of trips, Best Friend and I are planning a trip to Vegas in late September or early October. She said that she'd pay for my hotel and airfair (she found a package deal that seems pretty good) as long as I can pay for my activities like if we decide to see a Circ show (we both really want to see Ka, but for different reasons: She wants to see it because she's never seen that one, and I want to see it because it has five stages that move. Yeah, I'm a techie geek!), or if we did some sightseeing other than casino hopping. I'm really looking forward to this trip! We've both talked about wanting/needing a weekend away from other halves (she's had wall to wall boyfriend ever since he pretty much quit his job to go to college (he went from almost full-time to less than part-time), and I've had wall to wall husband lately). We might even be meeting another friend there for a day!

Well, that's about it. More later

Ahh High School...

I find high school kids to be more amusing everyday. I recently worked a fashion show (run by students who have never stepped foot into the theatre except to listen to a speaker, let alone run a show of any sort) for the fashion industries class. They had all these GREAT ideas in their heads...

Unfortunately none of them either worked in our SMALL theatre, nor did they stay the same for any given amount of time. It was kind of like herding cats with A.D.H.D.

The night of the show, I wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home. My replacement was told what to do (she had to push a button to skip to the next track on the cd player. Not a hard job.), and she was able to enjoy much of the show. The girl next to her, who had never even seen a light board (so we attempted to make it real easy on her and just told her to push ONE button) let alone run one turned to my co-worker and pointed out that she noticed that none of us wears makeup. We don't because no one is supposed to see us if we do our jobs right, and most of the time we would end up sweating it off before too long anyway.

The fashion student then asked 'does the makeup interfere with the electrical equipment?'

Now if I had been there, I totally would have said yes. My co-worker was just too shocked to say much of anything at first. Then she managed a squeeky 'no' before switching the track.

This is the same fashion student that I told about four times which button she had to push on the light board to make the lights come up. Then I had to explain to her that the button she had to push only ran her board because the boards weren't interchangable. I would have had fun with her, but I needed to feel better first.


For more recent news, Himself finally got a new car. His old one was totalled in a car accident in early October (he had the right of way, but the other driver didn't seem to think so), and after one car-ing it for about three weeks, he finally has a two year old Monte Carlo. It's a nice car and he should have it paid off in about five years, but probably sooner. The other driver seems to be in the wind now. He stopped and talked to the police, but no one has heard from him since. The insurance company that he said he had a policy from has no record of his name or policy number, and the guy's uncle had never heard of the registered owener of the car. Fanfreakingtastic.

A month later, I got into a car accident (I wasn't driving), and my friend's car was totalled. The good thing about that accident is that it got the guy we hit arrested. He apparently had a warrent out for his arrest and he was hauled away. His wife was not so happy. My friend is pretty sure the wife is going to try to sue, but we're not sure for what. Yes we hit them, but we weren't there when he did whatever it was that got the warrent. People are funny sometimes. Okay maybe not.

Pretty much until the end of the month is going to be hectic. Fun, but very hectic. Lots of work, which is fabulous, and there is a small chance I'll be promoted. Very small chance, but it's there. We're really short on leads right now, so the PTB finally decided that it was time to promote and hire. Yea us! Doesn't mean lots more hours, but it does mean slightly more consistant hours. Not only that, but I might get my church gig back. I kind of like those guys. They're funny.

That's all for now

M

Testing...

I've been having some issues with signing into Blogger the past few times I've tried, so there has been a sudden lack of blog posts.

That and work has been keeping me busy for once.

We just had a big meeting, and I got onto one of the house crews! This is supposed to mean that I'm going to be getting a lot more hours starting this school year. Not only that, but we all got raises, so it should take us a little longer before we're flat broke.

In that meeting, I found out that the lead that I'm going to be working with pretty much all the time is the one lead I don't always get along with. I'm going to treat this like a test. If I can handle this, I can pretty much handle anything.

Not much has been happening. At work we've been fixing light cables, and I had that wonderful feeling you get when something you fixed works. We strung up the cables onto the lights on the third electric, plugged them in and tested them out. They all worked! What a feeling!

The girls have been good...for the most part. They all had to be flea dipped, so none of them are really talking to me. Actually Little Bit is talking. And talking. And talking. And TALKING! If she's not stretched out on something smaller than her, she's chatting away to anyone or anything who would listen. Even if it won't listen, she'll talk to it anyway.

Himself has been working himself to the bone. In fact he's cutting so much meat, he mistook his own leg for his knife holder and stabbed himself in the upper thigh. The bruise was so pretty I had to take a picture of it. Unfortunately the picture didn't turn out very good, but the colors were really pretty. There was light blue along the outer edge, darker blue closer in, magenta and red on the center and top. It eventually faded into yellow, blue and green. No sooner had that fully healed when he did it again in a different spot. When he told me that he wanted to be a meat cutter, I reminded him of all the accidents he's had with knives. He insisted that he would be fine, and so far it has been. He's been at his store for almost five years, and the worst wound he got was when he was working in produce and sliced his thumb open with a small blade from his utility knife. Go figure.

Well that't about it for now. I'm tired and want to go to bed.

M

Arrrggghhh!

Not like the pirate! No, this is a frustrated growl at the growing stupidity that is society.

Just the other day, I found out that America's Next Top Model just had a 'plus size' winner.

She's a size 10.

And she's 'plus sized'.

A SIZE 10 IS NOT 'PLUS SIZED'! No matter what. The national average size is a 12. If someone is going to be 'plus sized' they should at least be a 16!

The only thing wrong with that model is that she had an butt. None of the other models had a butt. In fact I don't think there are any models out there that actually have any actual body parts other than skin and bones.

I may be heavy, but I'm working on that. I'm trying not to stress too much about my weight, I'm just trying to get healthy again. Belly dancing at least twice a week, and walking/swimming/biking/lifting weights at least twice a week will do that.

Another thing: BMI (body mass index) is probably the biggest load of bulls**t out there. People forget that muscle weighs more than fat. There are body builders out there that are technically 'obese' because they're 6 feet tall and 290lbs!

I have gotten teased about my weight for as long as I can remember, and it's a pretty sensitive subject for me. I've struggled for years to accept who I am and what I look like. Faires are pretty much the only time I feel truly comfortable in my skin because the rule there is 'if you got it, flaunt it!. I get teased by older men about my ample chest, but it's all in 'clean' fun. They don't mean anything by it, and it sometimes gets me free stuff just for teasing them back. Some of the women are jealous of my generous 'tracks of land' because I fill out the bodices more and still look good wearing them. Faires are really the happiest times for me.

Well, that's my rant for tonight. I'm too tired to keep it up now. Ranting really takes it out of you!

M